Mikumi 9-10

For the fall semester there were 2 students from Wartburg College at the Lutheran Junior Seminary. Pastor H asked me to go along on their overnight trip to Mikumi so Morgan would have someone to share a cabin with. I was really excited to go back to Mikumi and have the chance to spend the night. I met up with Pastor H, Morgan and Michael at LJS for lunch and then we drove to Mikumi. We drove around the park until dark. It was amazing. I saw more animals this time than on any of my other trips to Mikumi. It hadn't rained in months and everything was really dry. Many of the water holes were dried up completely. There were 2 water holes that the hotel regularly pumped water into. For this reason we were able to see many animals right where we were staying. We we arrived back at dark we discovered that the Cape buffalo had taken over the hotel. It was a bit scary. We wanted to go to our rooms for a few minutes before dinner and encountered a number of buffalo that were way to close for comfort. At the door I had Morgan stay back from the room while I tried to quickly unlock the door without disturbing the buffalo about 15 feet away. Throughout dinner we could hear the buffalo roaming back and forth between the 2 water holes and later we heard the elephants come in and push the buffalo back a bit. The staff assured us that the buffalo wouldn't cross the 1.5 foot tiny fence separating them from where we were eating. I wasn't so sure. During the night I was woken to the sound of something that looked similar to a deer grazing outside my window. The next morning we woke up to see the elephants were everywhere. They were meandering through camp away from the water holes right between all of the cabins. It was amazing. One even stopped to eat grass from one the cabin's roof! The staff told us the small swimming pool had to be drained because elephants had been going there for water. As we walked to breakfast we saw fresh tracks from the elephants and buffalo. We also noticed that some buffalo had wandered over or around the tiny fence we were assured they never crossed sometime in the night....wasn't really that big of a surprise to me. We were able to go out for another drive before returning to camp for breakfast and then heading home. It was an amazing trip.